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I'm from Singapore and is currently planning a trip to UK with my bf from Jun 26th to Jul 13th (18 days), meaning that we have about 16 full travel days. We have many ideas on the places to visit and wish to understand and enjoy the culture and sights, rather than at a "touch and go" pace.

London-Gatwick will be where we are flying in and out and we plan to cover England and Scotland for our UK trip and possibly add another city outside of UK, e.g. Paris.

As this is our 1st trip to Europe, we hope to get some valuable advice from you all so that we can map out the skeletal structure of our itinerary. We aim to keep to a low budget and our travel likes include nature trails, driving along scenic scenery, exploring heritage like castles & museums, outlet shopping, food and theatre. Some of the places to plan to visit are as follows:

The above list seems exhaustive for a 16 days trip. So we would greatly appreciate any valuable advice to add or remove. We would also appreciate any views on the order of places to visit to make our planning easier..

I am exhausted just looking at how much you plan to do . A car is your best option .I would think to get accommodation that is reasonable but comfortable would be £60-70 for 2 people per night - In towns it could cost more.

You have at least 2x as much to fit in as is possible even if you just tried to visit every place, not going in, just taking a picture as you passed by, and I doubt you could even get to everything in the time let alone actually visit and enjoy it.

Scotland alone on your itinerary could take two weeks. Once you add in actually entering places, doing things there, you'll have to cut out ata guess half of what you wrote.

Something else to consider - upon arrival in gatwick, go to London. Get a day or two there, then a cheap return to Paris vi Eurostar. Then, back to London, bit more time there, then an overnight sleeper train to Scotland. Saves one nights hotel cost, travel while you sleep. Fly back to Gatwick from Scotland the evening before you fly back to Singapore the next day.

Also research organized coach trips as peterscot said, to fit the most places in, (if that's your style of holiday), just accept the more you "visit", the less you'll experience and the more time you'll spend travelling *between* places, rather than *at* places.

I agree with peterscot, skip Man U and Liverpool they are too far away from the other places you are looking at, visit London teams (Arsenal, Chelsea, Spurs?) instead. You just dont have the time. If you do visit them, you'll have to miss a couple of days elsewhere.

Yes, I do agree it is exhaustive. As such, we were wondering how we can cut our certain places in Scotland to make it smoother...or even sacrifice Paris so that we can experience more at each place.

For Scotland, how many days do you think is sufficient if we wish to at least cover edinburgh, Inverness, loch ness, eilean castle and glencoe? In that sense, perhaps it would be more sensible not to try a loop to Glasgow?

<<Perhaps to be clearer, we actually plan on traveling free & easy rather than going with tour groups...>

Fair enough, but if you are traveling by yourselves, you'll probably be able to fit fewer things in than if on a tour, because the tours know how to stick to a timetable, where to go (they wont get lost) where to park, the best routes, etc. So, as you have so much you want to see, if you cant cut it down, that might be an option.

If not, and self guided would be my preference and probably most here, you can still "steal" their itineraries, eg at least use them for ideas and importantly to see whats possible. If a coach tour visits A, B, C in a day, don't imagine you can visit A, B, C plus D & E as well :-)

( When people talk about rushed coach tours, the reason they are rushed is because the itineraries are so crowded. It would be just as rushed by car )

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9.
Re: Help on itinerary planning!

9 Oct 2010, 06:21

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